What is an experience strategy?

Experience Strategy = Business Strategy + UX Strategy*

It’s why your business is developing products and services the way it is, not just what.

Why would you need one?

1. Helps you evaluate new products and features in light of the goals of your business as well as the value to the user.

The strategy that you develop for your product ought not evolve in isolation. Even though the value of user experience is clear, your over-arching reasons for providing something should be considered with equal weight.

Mental Models, Indi Young

2. Bridge the gap between brand promise and experience 

See http://nativeye.com/blog/brand-promise-customer-experience-and-everything-in-between/

3. “The experience is the product”

It’s simply how you succeed in today’s experience economy http://nativeye.com/blog/the-experience-economy-links/

How do you develop one?

Start with the customer perspective. As we can see from the 7 dimensions of customer experience, this really is a business-wide challenge. Strating with customer perspective helps take out office politics and focus different departments on a common goal.

You may want to develop a mental model. As Indi Young points out:

A mental model helps you visualize how your business strategy looks compared to the existing user experience. Thus, it is a diagram that can support your experience strategy.

While technology and operating conditions might change quickly, mental models change slowly (providing a welcome anchor in a hectic world).

Map business goals and strategy against user mental models to see how they compare.

*Jesse James Garrett, “Experience Strategies — The Key to Long-term Design Value.”

Originally posted at nativeye

Have been revisiting Indi Young’s Mental Models recently. In one section she urges readers to ‘Pay attention to the whole experience’ when building up a model of user experience.

The ‘whole experience’ includes all the ways an organization interacts with its users: stores, account statements, customer service calls, product ordering web sites, packaging, and so forth.

The reason to do this is to gain competitive advantage:

Businesses that pay attention to the entire spectrum of customer interaction, and get it right most of the time, win attention and loyalty. Because the mental model depicts the whole of the user’s environment—it is not focused on one aspect, service, or tool—it represents the user’s perspective of the whole experience.

This echoes the call to pay attention to the 7 dimensions of branded customer experience that bridge the gap between brand promise and experience.
One of the applications of nativeye is to map all the points customers experience your product, service or brand – helping you to build user mental model based on real user data.

Originally posted at nativeye

This article calls on marketers to fix the disconnect between the promises brands make and the actual experience customers receive.

“Essentially, brands are built on promises but it’s the experience you have of an organisation that constitutes reality.” Thomas Brown, head of insights at the CIM

It suggests marketers are falling into the trap of claiming more and more about their brand in order to cut through in the crowded marketplace, but without backing it up in practice.
Is lack of customer insight to blame? Perhaps only on the part of senior marketers:

The CIM report found that while customer insight and research are being shared across business units, and senior leaders, it rarely permeates the ranks of the organisation. Only 14 per cent of the marketers surveyed said it was the main driver of decision making.

Not that this insight should be applied in a uniform way. An advertising campaign can be outrageous and not based in reality as long is this is understood by the audience not to be an actual product claim. Good brand communication and good customer experience can look very different – as long as they both deliver on their respective briefs.
But it may be that when it comes to customer experience, useful trumps engaging. For Google at least:

Google’s problem is also the challenge that many brands now face- given the complexity of media fragmentation, brands want to try and create deeper engagement through social media channels with their creative assets, but there’s a big danger here; brands need to be providing things that are ultimately useful to consumers.

And

Too specific a focus on communication engagement might lead brands to take their eye of the ball and not continue to innovate their product portfolio, falsely believing that engaging communication is a substitute.

Brand Utility anyone?

Originally posted at nativeye

By all accounts Sony is in a bit of bother. With no profit since 2008 and a predicted $6m loss this year, it still produces solid products but no real hits in recent years. Is lack of attention to product experience to blame? This guy thinks so. The argument is that successful products are not just about functionality any more. Customers have moved on from “What are the specs?” to “What’s it like to use?”.

So if the tech is a given how do you create a great experience?

A few things to consider beyond the feature set:

1) Be easy to use

• Bit of a no-brainer, but can too easily get pushed aside when committees are involved that have multiple interests
• Highlights the importance of senior design input and sign-off (as opposed to just the engineering dept) to make sure interfaces are easy to use, intuitive and uncluttered with irrelevant stuff

2) Allow customisation

• Apple has one phone in two colours but a myriad of customisation is possible via apps – can your product be customised through software/ digital accompaniment?
• Help people create their own experience – for example this Canadian Bike Shop that teaches its customers mechanics

3) Context and intent

• Does your product work well for what your customer wants to use it for right now?
• How about mobile?
• How about offline?

4) Packaging

• Another thing Apple do brilliantly
• Plan for the ‘grand unboxing’
• Getting customers off to a flying start

5) Community

• Like Harley Davidson, what else do your customers get for being your customers?
• Can you harness your customers to help other customers like Giff Gaff?
• The shared experience is a powerful driver of the individual one

6) Attention to detail

• Think of the cult-like customer devotion found in Apple Stores. They got there by being obsessive about every aspect of the customer experience. Obviously someone has written a book about it

Originally posted http://nativeye.com/blog/the-rise-of-experience-over-product/

Chris Anderson predicted broadcast TV would die, but it didn’t.

Social media is the new watercooler

He reports one executive’s comment that social media is the new watercooler, providing the vehicle to share cultural references and keeping the shared viewing experience alive. Live events are a common example of traditional TV and social media working in harmony, with social adding a new dimension through ‘second screen’ commentary and witty banter.

Active or passive discovery?

But it’s not just live events. Sometimes we don’t want to have work to find our entertainment, we just want to switch on the box and see what’s on. Here again social can help. If you’re channel hopping and a friend tweets about a show you like that’s on now, you may well follow their recommendation (even if it is just to see the size of a squirrel’s nuts on The Great British Bake Off).

Default sharing

Netflix, the on-demand internet streaming service, launched recently in the UK and have taken social sharing a stage further. They only give the option to sign up with a Facebook account. They use this to publish shows you’ve watched to your friends and therefore drive implicit recommendation. You can un-authorise the app afterward or use the ‘Don’t share on Facebook’ button if you don’t want to share your viewing habits with the world, but the point is that social sharing is now on by default.

A lot of things in business get labelled ‘strategic’ that aren’t. Instead they are either goals dressed up as strategy or worse, high-sounding language that doesn’t mean anything to anyone. Richard Rumelt dubs this ‘bad strategy’. It’s dangerous because it deludes companies into thinking they have a plan when they don’t. Being fluffy is not strategy. Simply being ambitious is not a strategy.

Good strategy on the other hand looks deeply at the current situation, diagnoses the challenge or problem and provides guidance on how to address it.

Remelt calls this the “kernel of good strategy” and details it thus:

1. A diagnosis that defines or explains the nature of the challenge. A good diagnosis simplifies the often overwhelming complexity of reality by identifying certain aspects of the situation as critical.
2. A guiding policy for dealing with the challenge. This is an overall approach chosen to cope with the obstacles identified in the diagnosis.
3. A set of coherent actions that are designed to carry out the guiding policy. These are steps that are coordinated with one another to work together in accomplishing the guiding policy.

Here’s to more good strategy in 2012.

Ref: Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Prof. Richard Remelt

Presentation by Holly Goodier, Head of Audiences at BBC Future Media which explores the contexts in which people use today’s most common screens. Here are some brief notes on the 6 contexts:

1. Attachment - to what degree do people describe a device as ‘can’t live without it’ (the mobile phone)
2. Intent – what do people use it for? (e.g. laptops for productivity, tablets for enjoyment)
3. Ability – what devices do people have? (97% households have a TV; 1.3 phone subscriptions per person in the UK; generally people have 2+ screens)
4. People – shared experiences vs solo (e.g. we compromise on content if we watch with others)
5. Place – the impact of location
6. Time – when different devices are used throughout the day (e.g. mobiles and tablets at beginning and end of the day, computers during the day)

Matching content to device, the BBC found an intuitive connection:

Smartphone + Comedy

Games console + Kids/ Family

Tablet + Factual/ Arts

According to Aleks Krotoski on the BBC Culture Show, the web – the world’s biggest serendipity engine – is in danger of losing its mojo. Personalised software is threatening happy chance encounters by serving you up stuff based on the things you already do and like. This scenario is the so-called filter bubble. It arises because in this personalised world we only get what we put in, and therefore risk closing ourselves off from new content and experiences. The cost of this is that we fail to make the leaps that are the basis for innovation in our work and lives.

But can this be avoided if we simply log out from these services?

Google filters your search results based on the things you have clicked on before – moving things up the rankings that it judges to be most relevant to you. Facebook is increasingly working on the assumption that you will always be logged in, tracking what you do on other sites so it can report back to your Facebook friends and implicitly make suggestions to them. Serendipity engines like Hunch can be taught who you ‘are’ by a simple process of answering yes or no type questions (conjoint analysis) and then making recommendations on that basis.

All these suggestions and predictions are based on what has gone before. But isn’t serendipity dependent on entirely new encounters and experiences that by definition do not depend on the past? Or if they are connected, don’t they at least need to be an order or two removed from your day-to-day?

When attempting to boost creativity, we are told to travel a different route to work, listen to a new type of music or watch an opera (if this isn’t something you usually do). In other words, force yourself into new realms in order to expand your sphere of experience and forge new connections. In the (logged in) online world this is increasingly difficult because you get what you put in.

So is one way to cope with this just to log out? We could maintain a logged-in version of ourselves to benefit from personalisation but also make use of a logged-out version to open ourselves to unforeseen happy events. Services such as Tor can be used to preserve anonymity and hacks like this help us to opt out of personalised services. If software requires us to be logged in, maybe we could do so with a different persona that would leave us open to an alternate set of information and experiences.  The first step is being aware of the rules of engagement and then equipping ourselves to make informed choices.

Two words: cross-platform
This was the dominant theme for this year’s conference – the need to design for the whole user experience across devices and contexts, and avoid getting stuck in a silo mentality. As @resmini pointed out, users don’t notice channels, only the (cumulative) experience. UX designers must help them move seamlessly across channels, making sure experiences are connected and relevant in each particular context. He encouraged the audience to think of information architecture as a foundation, a connecting ‘layer of meaning’ into which we plug touchpoints and interfaces.

Domain-driven design
From a practical point of view, @MikeAtherton talked about his experience at the BBC of implementing ‘domain-driven design‘. For him, websites are less a strict hierarchy of information and more an ecology of individual bits of content. These bits persist but can be recombined with others around domains of interest or subject matter. He gave the example of episodes of Sherlock whose context (e.g. series number, distribution channel, format) are dynamic. How do you orgnanise this content so that users can continue to find it as these contexts evolve? Having TV episodes as re-combinable bits with permanent URLs (e.g. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tffft) means that they they can cope with fluid contexts without breaking any links (something Tim Berners-Lee would consider ‘un-cool‘) and be combined with other elements to form clusters of content.

ROI of design
@johnmildinhall parachuted in as a last minute replacement but provided a useful framework for evaluating the value of design. It may be a challenge to get the client data necessary to establish an ‘as-is’ level of value, but by doing your own benchmarking it’s something that can inform project planning and success evaluation. It is also useful when demonstrating the value of design-thinking verus traditional management consultancy approaches.

Here is his model for evaluating design value:

Designing for distraction
Giles Colborne gave an interesting counter-talk on the dangerous by-product of seductive interfaces. We are addicted he says, and things like email, Twitter, and device notifications suck up our attention, reduce our productivity and even kill us (if, say, we are driving distracted by our mobile phone). The audience ‘oohed’ in recognition when a screenshot of TweetDeck was flashed up.

Providing less seductive interfaces won’t work as users won’t buy them, but providing incentives to be less distracted might. The example of the email client that forces you to use it for 15mins was a great, if admittedly un-sellable, example. Things like switching notifications off as default might help ween addicted users off their devices. But it’s also about providing the means for people to pick up on what they were doing after an interruption. With distracted users designers need to design for context, not task completion.

Designing the wider web
Finally @cennydd spoke about his view of the Wider Web. This tied off the day’s theme of cross-platform design neatly. For him the web is finally becoming its own medium. Available on a slew of different devices, designing for the wider web is not just about different screen sizes but the context in which it is being used. These include challenges such as variable connectivity, offline modes, what content is relevant at a particular moment. He advocated a modular approach, with different modules of content able to be switched on and off as appropriate to the prevailing context.

While this makes perfect sense to me, it seems that designers suddenly have a whole lot more on their plate. This extra work is fine if there is budget to pay for it. We will have to help clients prioritise, perhaps by bringing context or user scenarious into the equation more and working out which are the most important.

Samsung’s new Smart TV makes your telly look like an iPad – programmes and services displayed as neat square apps ready to be summoned in a click. But has television (and more pertinently the television industry) finally embraced digital and social technologies to enhance the viewing experience?

TV’s path to embracing the web has not exactly been straightforward. In the beginning (let’s say for argument about 10 years ago) the TV industry worried a great deal about the young digital upstart. They worried that the advent of ‘new media’ would eat into TV watching time. They worried that PVRs would allow people to skip ads and hence reduce revenue. They worried that people would make their own programmes, stick them on YouTube and never switch on their TV set again. These fears even led some like comms giant Viacom to adopt a siege mentality and sue their way out of things.

On the other hand you had corporations such as the BBC who couldn’t get enough of digital (although some would argue that their license fee model made it easier for them to do this commercially). But other commercial players did start to embrace digital technology and so it was that two very distinct attitudes began to emerge. These went along the lines of:

1. Oh crap, things have got too complex I will put my head in the sand now / call the lawyers
2. This is great, we now have loads more opportunities to connect with our audience (and make money)

10 years on and there are no prizes for guessing who has had the most success. These are the people that did not try to cling on to the old model but embrace the new. PVRs might mean lost revenue from people skipping ads, but making content available on demand on the web provided alternative ad revenue opportunities (e.g. 4OD who have achieved a very slick integration). YouTube could be perceived as a threat or it could be a good way to reach a new audience and promote their content (like HBO for example).

And did everyone start making their own TV programmes? No, because it’s far too much trouble! The fact remained, if you make or commission good content then you have a bunch more channels to distribute it on. Channel 4 understood this a few years ago. When we made the Big Brother facebook app the brief was to find ‘alternate ways to distribute video content’. We took that, created an app that mimicked the format of the show and added social share for good measure. And since then many people have been doing even more wonderful things have been done at that place where TV meets digital.

Here are a few lessons we’ve picked up along the way:

Not everyone can make great TV, but everyone can take part

Yeah ok, so someone can get a gazillion hits by filming their dog fall off a log or their son biting their other son, but consistently delivering great content ain’t easy. User generated content bears this out – most of it is drivel.

But people CAN and should be encouraged to take part.

Whether it’s rating, sharing, commenting viewers can participate in small (easy) ways. Simply providing these tools and listening to what viewers want are good steps towards making your channel customer-centric. The 1 9 90 rule continues to apply – 1% people create content, 9% curate (share, comment, rate) but 90% of people will always just quietly consume without participating thank you very much.

It’s about the user experience

Or more specifically, letting me access content when and where I want, helping me feel part of it, helping me get more. Radio seemed to get this a lot quicker than TV did, and for me personally, digital completely transformed the way I experienced it as a medium. Catching up on programmes I had missed, discovering new ones I didn’t know about and finding supplementary content about stuff I was listening to right now, informal tweets throughout the show, all this added to the experience.

TV-wise of course the original is BBC Red Button. Never reaching early promise (possibly because it is still clunky and been sidelined by iPlayer) RB still comes into its own when there is multiple content to choose from, for example at sporting events where you can choose which match to watch.  Other (supplementary) content you can find quicker by googling on your phone.

Elsewhere commercial carriers are overcoming technical challenges to offer ‘TV Anywhere’. SkyGo allows subscribers to watch on your laptop, iPad or iPhone (i’ve already seen guys keeping an eye on the football under the table while out ‘socialising’).

TV is a social event

There is still room for the shared experience – it’s just that the water-cooler moment occurs in real-time over the web. Live events are the obvious candidates to benefit from ‘dual screen’ activity, but from #HIGNFY to #EducatingEssex, lots of other programmes have started displaying their Twitter hashtags to bring people together around their content.

And apps like IntoNow socialise the TV experience further, connecting people in real-time around their shared viewing experience. Hulu have just launched a Facebook app meaning users can watch TV clips without leaving Facebook.

Channels still have a place

There is talk of threat to channels by ‘disintermediation’ startups such as Google TV and Boxee. These promise cheaper, pay-as-you-use models for consumers and increased revenue for content producers by offering direct distribution to audiences .

However there are a few factors that have stopped this happening for now.  The first is supply-side: programmes like Mad Men involve a huge risk and guaranteed income from networks and cable providers is a way to help programme makers sleep better at night.

For consumers, other forces are at work. Firstly we’re overwhelmed with a myriad of stuff so we need someone to curate for us. Also we’re quite lazy and need you to make great series like Mad Men so we can sit back, switch on the telly and forget about life for a while. We understand that you might have to show us a few ads but if this means great content for free then that’s an exchange we understand.